The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

[DouglasCole]

I am speculating ruthlessly in the following post, and I have no special knowledge that I’ve included in the post that would lead me to believe my numbers are accurate. I’m guessing. But a game that relatively quickly sells out its first print run apparently will not be reprinted, despite being #6 on the revenue charts . . . that means a cost/revenue imbalance on the cost side of things, and in the game industry, that’s not that hard a place to arrive at.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG: Aftermath of Report to the Stakeholders

[GM Joe]

Nice summary! Even having read the report and all the posts, I enjoyed reading what you had to say.

[afschell]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

I suspect that when people complain about "the template," we're hearing a summary of a range of complaints which aren't really about it being in Word. There's a profusion of styles which can be intimidating to the newcomer, and there are any number of structural issues from complex formats for various entities (NPCs, spells, organizations) which are easy to get wrong to the admittedly unintuitive way in which content is to be organized for adventures.

My only complaint about the template is where it falls in the proposal-to-publication path. I completely understand that SJGames wants the submission to "look" good before they completely accept it for publication. But, from an economic standpoint, adventure writing is a labor of love. I would gladly work with MS Word and the template after receiving a favorable response with regards to pending publication. Investing time formatting to a specific style prior to that seems counterproductive to me.

[mook]

My two cents on the template is from the other side -- a significant part of receiving "a favorable response" seems to be "Can this author follow a template and turn their ideas into properly formatted text?" There's no way to actually know that without seeing properly formatted text.

[Taliesin]

Doug,
I think you left the most important thing out of your analysis: Opportunity cost.
If resources spent on DFRPG generated 3% profit and those same resources spent on another project would generate 12% it's not sane to put the effort into DFRPG.

Also, kickstarters for other tabletop RPG products frequently do much, much better than DFRPG did. I took that as a very strong indicator that there is no large untapped market for GURPS products.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

This supposedly urning desire for adventures rings hollow. If there was a market for them people would be writing them and bugging the heck out of SJG to get them published.

I can only speak for myself. There are several reasons why I haven't released or submitted my material for the DF RPG

In no particular order

1) Any of the things I have that were played were written for 125 characters not the 250 point level of DF. Since the spring of 2017 I been involved with three games one as a player, two as a referee. Fantasy AGE, Adventures in Middle Earth, and OD&D using my Majestic Wilderlands additions. So I haven't had the time to organize a session to run thing at the DF power level.

2) Anything I can release for DF or GURPs, I can release using a OGL SRD, my own resources and make the same amount of money. Why are there 80 games released per week because the economics of self publishing allows it to happen. If you are smart about your costs and audience it is very low risk. You keep the rights to your original material. You have the final say as to how it is presented.

So why I make the arguments I do? Because GURPS one of my two favorite fantasy RPGs. (the other is Harnmaster). I have fun with classic editions of D&D but I still like GURPS more. After weighing everything the traditional process of getting published for GURPS doesn't cut it for me.

But depending on its terms a 3PP program may change the equation enough.

I am not anybody special in this regard. There is zero reason why SJ Games should change their production methods for me. However my attitude is not uncommon in the hobby especially among those like myself who make self publishing work. This partially chokes the supply of would be authors.

The economics of the industry have changed or more accurately expanded. Traditional methods of game production work and are needed if the volume is there. But for when the volume is not there the rules are very different today.

I advocated for more adventure but if folks read my posts, what I argued for is for more of everything. Fate, the OSR, Pathfinder, D&D 5e 3pp, all thrive on variety produced inexpensively to the publisher via open content system reference documents or community content programs.

The publisher who hold the IP still produces material and generally by using a traditional publishing model. The fans know if they see a Paizo, Wizards, or Evi Hat logo that book will be produced to a higher standards.

But despite all the garbage found their respective 3PP releases there is a vibrancy not found among other games. While 3PP that appeal generally are rare many developed small fan bases and when added up makes for a large number.

I think by having some 3pp program in addition to why are already doing will be trick to build a slightly bigger audience for GURPS with a lot more variety than we have now.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I am speculating ruthlessly in the following post, and I have no special knowledge that I’ve included in the post that would lead me to believe my numbers are accurate. I’m guessing. But a game that relatively quickly sells out its first print run apparently will not be reprinted, despite being #6 on the revenue charts . . . that means a cost/revenue imbalance on the cost side of things, and in the game industry, that’s not that hard a place to arrive at.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG: Aftermath of Report to the Stakeholders

What strikes me about your economic analysis is that all of that math could have been done *prior to* even setting up the Kickstarter. And if your numbers are even *remotely* in the ballpark of close to maybe being almost right, it was essentially a foregone conclusion before the gate even opened that it was going to play out this way.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

If there was a market for them people would be writing them and bugging the heck out of SJG to get them published.

That doesn't make logical sense. Just because the market for a product exists doesn't mean that the producers exist. And so by extension you can't really claim anything about the *potential* size of a market on the basis of the number of *existing* producers.

Also, we don't know if there are people writing them and bugging the heck out of SJG to get them published, or if all of the potential producers are doing so. I've written a bunch of GURPS-dependent adventures and I have no interest in going to SJG with them, for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with the size of the market.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by kmunoz

What strikes me about your economic analysis is that all of that math could have been done *prior to* even setting up the Kickstarter. And if your numbers are even *remotely* in the ballpark of close to maybe being almost right, it was essentially a foregone conclusion before the gate even opened that it was going to play out this way.

Remember that in the report to the stakeholders thread, when a poster pointed out that it seem like the result here was a foregone conclusion Steve Jackson himself said that it was both right and wrong. Right because a lot of that was in fact no avail, and wrong because there was the hopeful chance that things took off like crazy.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Remember that in the report to the stakeholders thread, when a poster pointed out that it seem like the result here was a foregone conclusion Steve Jackson himself said that it was both right and wrong. Right because a lot of that was in fact no avail, and wrong because there was the hopeful chance that things took off like crazy.

But even if it did take off like crazy, your (admittedly monkey) numbers don't suggest anything like scalability. If the Kickstarter had done 10x as well the economy of scale wouldn't have made it significantly more viable - and certainly not any more viable long-term (i.e., after completing the Kickstarter distribution).

And aside from all that, outside of the Kickstarter ecosystem DFRPG still had to contend with being corporately associated with two specific products: GURPS and Munchkin. For DFRPG to be a success it had to succeed within the roleplayer and boardgamer space - but roleplayers think GURPS is too complicated and boardgamers think Munchkin is hopelessly broken.

That's a lot of concrete shoe to overcome in the hope of it taking off like crazy.